The Equation
by Gura Kruor
Summary: The slow process of how Shin realized how he feels about his partner NoI.


**Disclaimer: **This is a non profit fanfiction, Dorohedoro belongs to Hayashida Q, please support the official release.

This is my gift for the Secret Santa held in dorohedoro-fan at dA and is my first Dorohedoro fic, so I hope to not disapoint you.

**The Equation**

The formula for the perfect woman is pretty simple on the surface, right?

Hot + smart + funny =The One.

But for Shin, it wasn't that simple, for he had to add some variables of his own research.

He spent most of his life in Hole, but barely knew what a normal human searched in a female he was too young when he escaped from his previous home. He became a grown man among magic users so; he saw the world more like them. Or that's what he believes.

For some strange reason, out of his understanding, the first friend he made after finally getting into their world was a female, although he didn't knew it in the beginning.

The name of said female is NoI, according to Chota she is two years younger than him, and he hasn't bothered to ask her real age so he will stick to that, is not as if it really matters, right?

His experience with older women was terrible, and couldn't even be counted as a date per se. The first time he got a chance with a woman, he was 16 and she was eight years older than him. Most of their encounters were spent in her bedroom with no more explanation needed; even he isn't proud of falling in her charms but regrets nothing.

Shin thought that he meant something for her, but the woman simply said that he was a good lad and she thought of him only as a sex buddy and nothing more. That was the first crush of Shin and his heart has been torn apart as quickly as his love for her had bloomed.

So, for this experience, he knows that _the _woman must be younger than him. He gets along with his partner easily and she has even good sense of humour, which was something he really appreciated in a person regardless their gender. So, according to him, is for her age that she is funny.

He was a natural serious man, back in Hole most of the kids didn't wanted to be with him for that reason. It is hard for somebody to make him smile let alone laugh and it is worse because he has a particular sense of humour to begin with. One of the things he liked the most was to trick his partner to pay for both their meals in a restaurant.

The first time he shared a table with NoI was the day he knew she was a girl. A cute one by the way, so that was the reason he felt safer when tricking her. He even smiled sheepishly when she bitted the bait and ended paying for his food and hers. And it wasn't as if she didn't have money, after all, she was En's cousin and surely had a large amount of money inside that cumbersome armour of hers. After that, he didn't see her again, surely for her training to become a demon and his full agenda.

After a year living as a mage he had observed many women, most of them wanted to achieve what they wanted through her feminine charms. Luring men into their beds or getting into theirs was one of the easier, if not the easiest, way to have a high position into a job or for getting money. Some believe that the oldest jobs in the world were soldiers and prostitutes, so it wasn't the hardest job for it had survived for millennia.

He didn't judge these women for the kind of job they had, they should stomach many nasty men and did it proudly, and some of them really deserved even a medal. But what he didn't liked was that they didn't tried to live out of the depravity, surely they had ambitions or greedy desires, but they choose it that way, and who was he to tell them to do otherwise?

He had been a hard worker since the moment he had memory. All what he had achieved it had cost him his own blood and tears, literally. That was one of the reasons for what he couldn't understand these women. So he wanted to met a person who had a strong will like his or a stronger one.

And he knew that person, one who had aspirations, dreams that he killed the next year they met. Her training was at the closest moment to get over and for two idiots ─and him, of course ─she had to use her magic, wasting all her efforts and chaining her to a normal life, well, normal in the parameters of a magician.

But even if she was fated to be one of En's cleaner, and his partner, she never stopped her attempts to be the best in her job. And that was something he really admired about her. She had even exercised her body to the point of being taller than him in order to get her job done better.

It had started as a joke, after one of their firsts missions together he felt over conscious about her being that fragile looking and asked her where was that monstrous strength of hers. But he was curious and asked her cousin about it; the strength she had displayed the first time they fought together was, according to En, a side effect of her metamorphosis; so, after Shin took note of that he tried to keep an eye on her… until one day she just noticed it and wanting him to take her seriously challenged him into a strength competition.

It was simple: she had to get stronger than him in a year and there was no money nor food in that bet just their pride at stake. And with that goal in mind, he started to train his body until exhaustion.

Slowly, the harvest of his effort started to be noticed, his time to grown had coincided with this bet and so he was getting taller quickly; besides, his back was now wider and his arms were bigger. He worked so hard, because he knew that for her regenerative powers she had an advantage for exhaustion was nothing when magic gave her the stamina of a battalion. And then, something happened, something that he wasn't expecting and couldn't notice at first.

Sometimes, when you see a person everyday you can't notice how they change; but for somebody who sees them only once after a long time, their changes are more visible. So, when Chota told him that he was missing something really important, it was already late for him to observe it with patience.

Maybe the fact that around that time he was "dating that woman" had influenced his lack of concentration, or simply because he was getting stronger and taller he couldn't notice that she was getting more muscle too. But, again, it was because he was starting to get reallt accustomed to her presence that it was kind of normal for her to be like that without ringing some bells inside his head.

The once petite NoI was now almost as muscle bound as him and was almost as taller as him. And to make it worse, she had now some men that were starting to get interested in her.

It was during a meeting that Chota had told him about her changes and it was because at that very moment, a guy was hitting on her. Shin told him that it wasn't his problem and that maybe she needed to know more men than him and En's habitual henchmen.

Shin thought that the insinuations of the bird-like magician meant nothing for him. But then En had sent them into a mission with a guy with a strong corrosive magic which meant that, NoI being as straightforward as ever could get most of her body damaged, and with her body her clothes.

After defeating the guy, the strong woman was almost naked and didn't bother to cover herself in front of him. He took a small glance at her and while blushing and hiding said blush looking to another side, he gave her his shirt and ordered to cover herself. That night he couldn't sleep for most of his dreams were filled with that simple image of her without clothes.

It wasn't as if he hadn't seen a naked woman before, or NoI herself naked. It was that until that very moment he hadn't thought of her as a woman… and well, he was 17 and full of stupid male hormones like any healthy youngster.

She had got bigger breasts, mostly for her training in less than a year she had passed from an A cup to a D cup. BREAKING NEWS: Guys like breasts. EVEN MORE BREAKING NEWS: Guys like big breasts. And as primal as it could get, Shin couldn't deny millennia of evolution and he didn't wanted to.

But how did he know about her cup size? Well, some people can tell you how you feel just by looking you into the eye and he had discovered a useless skill of his: to measure a woman just by glance if he wanted to. And using that lame trick he already knew that she had hips as wide as her back and a nice derrière.

Along that she had legs longer than any woman. Nice toned legs that could torn a man apart with a kick if she wished it. That pair wasn't flabby or straight as men legs, they had a good amount of flesh and muscle, and they were just perfect. And as easy as she could kill a bull with them, they could get tangled with his if he put some effort. But when he reached that point of reasoning, he was already half sleep and tossed these thoughts aside unconsciously.

Five years passed and all he could do when she carelessly bounced naked in front of him was to turn around and pray for her to never notice why he did it. He had learned how to suppress his primal urges now that he was an adult, it was difficult at first and more when she had surpassed him in height, which meant that _everything_ in her was bigger now; but when he gets his mind set into something he knew that he could achieve it.

NoI was quite a beautiful woman now, not a cute little girl but a full grown beauty that even with her mask, could charm any man and having him at her feet or eating from the palm of her hand.

Then the rumours started to spread, and whispers of them being more than partners at job reached Shin's ears. All he could do was to negate all of their assumptions and beat some of them if they told something really nasty about her. Thankfully these gossip never reached her and even if that happened, he knew that she would do the same as him in regards of it.

But then, Chota had to mess again with his mind. It was kind of strange how such a weird guy had a big impact in Shin's personal life. The bird-like magician wasn't outside his room most of the time, just waiting for En to make him his partner and the devils know what more. Shin didn't even knew what kind of magic he held but it was surely powerful for En still allowed him to stay at the manor.

Chota had told him that if he didn't wanted these people to lie about him, then he should make them say the truth by getting NoI to notice him as a man and not as a friend.

If Shin had a time magic user to sent him back to tell his younger version to keep far from Chota and of older women, his younger him could never believe him and mostly take him as a crazy old man who should keep into his own business before getting a beating. And even if that sounded like some kind of plan, things were never according to any kind of plan for Shin and when he had one, fate just wanted to mess with him and get her own way with him.

He had planned for him and NoI to be the strongest pair of magician's ─only below En, of course─ until the end of his life. And then some drug dealers had to appear and ruin everything what he had wanted.

It was supposed to be a routine mission: to lure out the boss of said dealers and kill him. The cross eyes were mostly magicians with useless kinds of powers or they were weak enough to not even being capable of producing smoke. Shin and NoI were the #1 pair of cleaners of En, the most trusted duo, what could get wrong this time?

Everything had the worst result, both of them were slaughtered by their target and their boss himself got almost killed in the process.

Some people declared that when a person is in a near death situation, their life starts to get reproduced in their brains like some kind of movie. That day, Shin confirmed that theory and sadly noticed that he was going to die with only one regret: he never told NoI how dear she was for him.

It was like some kind of epiphany; maybe for the shock he was being delusional and for the advice of the bird-like magician, his mind had started to imagine things. But when you lost something ─or in this case, are close to lose it─ you learn to look back and start to appreciate it.

The formula started to have sense now, NoI is younger than him, she has sense of humour, has a strong will, is good at her job, and last but not determinant, she was a beauty.

At the very moment of his life coming to an end, Shin knew that he loved NoI with all his heart and wished to have told her before them dyeing together.

Then all became red and black ─and mushrooms─ and the next time he opened his eyes ─which he believed could never happen again─, Shin swore that he could get his feelings to reach NoI and for her to return them.

But fortune is a bitch and had never liked him, for when he got the resolution, reality stroked him in the face as hard as his will power and his inner conscience reminded him that his love for her could never happen.

Both were best friends, and now that he had looked in his memory at a close up, it was an easy task for him to make her like him, after all, that already had happened long time ago, even before Chota had started to push his buttons.

But NoI was En's cousin ─nobody knew if they were related by blood but it didn't changed the fact that she was his cousin─ and he will never like his dear cousin to be with Shin, a mixed blood and furthermore a man who couldn't even protect her from any harm.

When Shin realized that fact, he made a bow to himself that the day he defeated the boss of the cross eyes, it was going to be the moment when he could tell NoI all what he felt about her and no care about En's opinion.

Four years had passed and that day is closer day by day so, when NoI rejected Sho's offer for her to be near immortal to fight the cross-eyes' boss, Shin had dared to slice her head to get these small smoke bottles into her brain just with the hope of her beating that man and even if Shin himself didn't survived, he could die happily just by knowing that NoI was safe and round.

But that didn't matters for him anymore, for he was now a mindless puppet of some strange being. He had even dared to attack the love of his life with no remorse in him and just walked away as if she was some kind of garbage stack.

Surely, Shin had been born under a bad star and fate was a bitch with him.


End file.
